Derek Eveleigh is standing on a bridge over the Thames in London. He’s drunk, and holding a bottle of gin. He’s contemplating suicide: bridge, tall building, under a tube train?

Simon Slater is Eveleigh in this single-hander lasting just under two hours. He goes in strong from the start and grabs our attention. The story begins in winter 1957 and he lives in a poky rented basement flat. He was a PC during the blitz and graduated to a DC where he could use his hobby and passion – photography. Sacked for being drunk on duty, he turns to fashion photography for a magazine and when this goes bust he receives a strange letter offering him big money to follow and photograph a beautiful but enigmatic young woman, no reasons given. While doing his paparazzo job a murder takes place, and when the police get nowhere he tracks down and interrogates the three chief suspects.

So far, so mysterious. When Eveleigh talks in turn to a ukulele-playing Irish standup comic, an American saxophone player and a Russian magician, Slater takes it up a notch, with quick-fire dialogue between Eveleigh and each suspect, switching between the characters’ accents and mannerisms with great skill. It all gets quite complicated in the second half, with Eveleigh ending where he started on the bridge.

It is a remarkable performance, with him playing the musical instruments (he composed the music) and doing some impressive magic tricks. The energy level is amazing and he is complicit with the audience as he talks to us through the fourth wall, at times seeming to single out an audience member. Although he probably can’t see us, in this socially distanced auditorium there’s nowhere to hide!

The play has been around the world, with Slater in the London production in 2013, and it’s an ideal start to the Watermill’s indoor season with the Covid restrictions. It is perhaps a bit too long and could be pruned: maybe the ukulele turn could be shortened?

There are still seats available for many performances. The Watermill’s auditorium keeps groups well apart, so if you feel you can go this would help them in this difficult time.

PAUL SHAVE

This is why we love live theatre

One-man tour de force thriller reopens Watermill auditorium after six-month Covid ban

Bloodshot, at The Watermill, Bagnor, until Saturday, October 17

There was a palpable ripple of excitement as the audience entered The Watermill auditorium after six long months of enforced closure as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

It was beautifully prepared for social distancing, with red bows tied around the seats that were to be kept empty, in anticipation of one day being unwrapped when things return to relative normality.

Douglas Post’s psychological thriller Bloodshot, set in 1957, is an excellent whodunit that keeps you guessing right up to the denouement. It’s a one-man play and the multi-talented Simon Slater gives a highly impressive, versatile performance as Derek Everleigh.

He’s an ex-police photographer, dismissed from the force on account of his alcoholism. As he tells the audience:

“First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.” His work for the Picture Post is coming to an end as the publication is going bust, the rent on his sparse basement flat – design by Agnes Dewhurst – is increasing and his world is at rock-bottom.

… That is until a manila envelope containing money arrives with a note offering him an assignment to take photos of Cassandra Ammons (Amanda Wilkins), a young black woman who worked as a magician’s assistant in a club in Mayfair.

He secretly follows her taking the required photos that are projected on to a large screen at the back of the stage. When Cassandra is found brutally murdered in Holland Park, Everleigh is determined to discover who her killer was.

The plot has many intriguing twists and turns, but there are apparently three very different suspects, including a burlesque-style Irish banjo playing comic whose jokes are appropriate for the time, hut may jar a little for today’s politically correct audiences.

Then there is the American saxophone-playing jazz musician. Finally, we meet the Russian restaurateur, who performs some incredible magic tricks, including swallowing razor blades.

All these characters are skilfully played by Slater, who gives a tour de force performance.

Patrick Sanford’s surefooted taut direction keeps the action and tension bubbling along in this superb ‘film noir’ production.

Slater thoroughly deserved the enthusiastic applause at the end and the murderer was …

Well you will have to go to find out.

Highly recommended.

ROBIN STRAPP